With rising rents and home prices, public transportation prone to go “on strike,” and rising energy costs, the middle class is taking a hit in American cities. But nowhere does that hit hurt more than in San Francisco, at least when it comes to owning a home. In fact, according to its newly released ”Middle Class Report,” Trulia asserts that San Francisco tops the national list as the #1 Least Affordable Metro for the middle class, beating out even Manhattan. As you can see in the spreadsheets above, SF offers fewer homes “affordable” to its middle class than any other metro across the U.S.A.

The data

Trulia data include 100 metropolitan areas, attempting to project what consumers can actually afford to buy in their area, and what percent of inventory is available in that price range. “To assess middle‐class affordability, we looked at all of the homes for sale across the U.S. through the eyes of the typical household in each metro area. For every for‐sale home, we determined whether it was affordable based on whether the total monthly payment for that home was less than 31% of the metro’s median household income.”

Homeownership less attainable year-over-year: Percentage of homes for sale within reach of middle class in 2012: 24%; percentage of homes for sale within reach of middle class in 2013: 14%

Comparison shopping

Since Trulia is defining the “middle class” separately for each metro based on the local median household income, we should look at how that translates elsewhere to get a better picture of S.F.’s situation. For a middle‐class family in the Chicago metro area, where median household income is$58,911, homes under $254,000 are within reach. Since among homes for sale in Chicago, 73% are listed for less than that $254K mark, nearly 75% of Chicago homes are “within reach” of the middle class.

And what does an “affordable home” look like in SF?

Under $425 K on the MLS, searching condos, townhomes and single-family, we found 33 current listings, and we highlight three here:

1. 1 bed, 1 bath tenancy in common on Stevenson, walkable location, shared yard and laundry, no parking: $385K (interestingly, this is the exact price it sold for in 2005, though it has listed and sold for less in the interim)